Old friends
Kati’s PAD chimed again, and again, she refused the connection. She was sweating.
Just need to get to the hopper, then everything’ll be fine.
The Martian tunnels smelled like a machine. Not the cooked ozone of a good, well-maintained engine, but of straining air recyclers that hadn’t been refitted in decades. It was claustrophobic, hot, and it wasn’t helping Kati’s mood.
Her PAD chimed again. Kati chanced a look at the readout and wiped the sleeve of her coat across her brow. Connect to 008s? Y/N
Kati jabbed the glowing red N on the screen.
“Get to the bay, get to the hopper, get to the port, get off this damned rock,” Kati recited to herself. It was a simple plan. She had enough Martian cred in her accounts to buy the first seat off of the planet she could find. Kati Jones was done with Mars.
She hurried through the tunnels for another ten minutes, snaking through a maze of intersections without a moment’s hesitation. When you’d been a driver as long as Kati had been, you had a feel for directions.
The PAD had stopped reporting connection requests.
The bay at Station One was under one of the bigger domes, and a few hoppers crisscrossed in the near-sky above her. Most were the play things of uber-rich Martian executives, high, high, high up the food chain, but some were beat-up tourist boats, and some were messenger craft. Her rental was right where she’d left it, clamped down at docking ring 10.
The docking ring balcony extended from the Martian rock wall. If the clamps had failed, her hopper would’ve fallen ten stories down and into the Weyland manufactory. Well, it would’ve fallen, except that the station defenses treated any ballistic object as a threat to the infrastructure and blasted that threat to atoms within seconds. Good design, that.
Kati pulled her PAD out and cleared all notifications, linking remotely with her rental hopper and firing up the engines. The door started to slide upward.
Kati’s sigh of relief was short-lived.
A shimmer appeared between Kati and her hopper, a shimmer that resolved into a woman in a form-fitting, blue stealth suit. The woman pulled an ornate helmet from her head revealing a youngish face holding a stern anger in check.
“So. Your PAD does work,” said Silhouette, her voice devoid of inflection or accusation.
Kati pulled up short. “Look, the job was fine, right? I got you out, we’re square.”
“You know we aren’t,” the woman replied, hooking her helmet on her belt and freeing her hands.
“I didn’t…” Kati started, but she trailed off, seeing the knowing in Silhouette’s eyes.
The gun was in Sil’s hand before Kati could come up with another angle.
What’ve you got?
I love, love, love Salem’s Hospitality. If I could, I’d have put all three in this deck. But you know what? Ibrahim will help me cope with that lack.
First, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. MCA Informant can go on an unrezzed Corporate Troubleshooter. Man, that is a terrible interaction. I dislike it. You have four clicks to get into that remote and get rid of it, or the Corp keeps you tagged, penniless, and unhappy with your life. It’s a frustrating oversight that Troubleshooter says Connection—but it’s also annoying that MCA Informant didn’t just read “Install MCA Informant on a [Runner] connection as a…” Anywho. I won’t play that combination. It’s no Bueno.
What I WILL play is a Harischandra deck that uses MCA Informant to enable Zealous Judge, Midseasons, Salem’s Hospitality, and Ibrahim Salem.
Also, super hilarious, in getting to the Weyland Alliance requirements, I put in three Ice Walls—which actually make Puppet Master useful! I mean, we don’t actually want to score a Puppet Master, we want to Exchange it, but how hilarious will it be if they start running remotes and we start pumping our Ice Wall up super strong?
Full disclosure, I’m not good at building NBN decks. The ICE feels so light, there’s so little recursion to bring SanSan, Ibrahim, Judge, and Premieres back out. I have to threaten then Midseasons, so I need to have enough money, but I’m not sure how I’m making it. This deck has a lot of tools, but not a lot of obvious ways to implement them.
I think, against a slow runner, this deck will be a lot of fun—very swiss army knife. But against a fast runner, I’ll probably panic and lose all my agendas quickly.
Oh, and of course there’s Aaron Marron. Good thing Aaron is so prone to giving information to the MCA. Can’t remove additional tags Mr. Marron!!!
So, what’s our goal here? Probably to get a Zealous Judge rezzed and put the runner in tag hell. We can rez Judge with MCA Informant or Data Raven.
From there, we definitely want to Scorch them. But if they’re just too darned squirrely and won’t let us tag hell them through Midseasons or Zealous Judges, we can try and score out using a combination of SanSan, Early Premiere, and the 24/7 plus Exchange of Information combo.
Oh, and if they do go into tag hell but we’re unable to kill them thanks to Paparazzi or Obelus or Plascretes, we can go for the one-of Psychographics and win off of a Beale.
I dunno. This is what NBN does, right?
Starstruck Harischandra (MCA Informant)
Harishchandra Ent.: Where You’re the Star
Agenda (12)
1x 15 Minutes
1x AstroScript Pilot Program
3x Breaking News ★★★
3x Project Beale
2x Puppet Master
2x Quantum Predictive Model
Asset (6)
2x Early Premiere
1x Ibrahim Salem
2x Jackson Howard
1x Zealous Judge ●●
Upgrade (1)
1x SanSan City Grid ★
Operation (16)
1x 24/7 News Cycle
1x Closed Accounts
2x Consulting Visit ○○○○○ ○
1x Exchange of Information
3x Hedge Fund
2x MCA Informant
1x Midseason Replacements
1x Psychographics
2x Salem’s Hospitality
2x Scorched Earth ●●●●● ●●●
Barrier (6)
2x Data Ward
3x Ice Wall ●●●
1x Resistor
Code Gate (5)
2x Archangel
2x Pop-up Window
1x Tollbooth
Sentry (3)
3x Data Raven
17 influence spent (max 17, available 0)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Station One
Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.
Sky Hammer Grid 